Sexually Transmitted Infections Caused By Female Body Hair Removal: Why You Should Stop Removing Your Pubes

Shaving your pubic hair into the shape of a heart? Bracing yourself for the pain of your next Brazilian wax?

Stop it. Just stop it right now.

It turns out removing body hair from your most sensitive region can result in a greater risk of sexually transmitted infections compared with people who prefer to go natural, a survey of more than 7,500 American adults published in the health care journal Sexually Transmitted Infections found. That's because shaving and trimming can leave small tears in the skin that make it easier for infections to spread.

But there's another reason people without pubic high might get more infections and you probably already guessed what it is. Groomers tend to have more sex, which means they are contracting infections from unprotected genital contact.

"This is an excellent study," Scott Butler, who studies STDs in college students at Georgia College & State University, told NPR."It's good for health care providers to be aware of this connection."

The report carried out by doctors from the University of California, San Francisco, concluded that body hair stylists should cut back on their grooming and delay sex until their pubic area had healed. Survey respondents said they preferred electric razors if they were men and manual razors if they were women. Some used scissors. About 84 percent of women and 66 percent of men said they shaved, waxed or cut their body hair in the past. About 17 percent removed all body hair at least once a month.

"We were surprised at how big the effect was," said Benjamin Breyer, a urologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study. "Right now, we have no way knowing if grooming causes the increase in risk for infections. All we can say is that they're correlated. But I probably would avoid an aggressive shave right before having sex."

There was one major health perk associated with getting rid of pubes. The study formed those without body hair were less likely to get lice.